Dreaming of lavender fields in the Second Wait

This is day 6 of the Second Wait for the lab results following surgery. The First Wait was for the biopsy results.

I wonder about walking again, gently, and slowly at first to retune my body from its restive slumber. My mind runs and does circles, stopping in the air sometimes, usually in the middle of the night and wakes me up with a worrying thought as it processes the stress of the last few weeks. This mental overactivity punctuates an otherwise calming time with metaphorical storms. I also get waves of fear that leave me unable to move. These have been subsiding since the surgery as I know that whatever path I now must follow, the source of the cancer has gone.

My cup size continues to shrink on one side as the swelling from the surgery goes down. It is healing well, and any pain reminds me that the cancer has gone so it doesn’t cause any discomfort: in fact, the complete opposite. I worry that it will be necessary to go through more surgery to remove more suspect cells when we get the lab results of doom. It is very reassuring that my breast size continues to diminish. It gives me hope.

I learned to dream of lavender fields long before I knew about the cancer, listening to a Sleep Story read by Stephen Fry on the Calm App and inhaling the scent of lavender oil.

In the summer I went to stay at a friend's gite in Brittany. I dreamt through different worries there with the mental walking through lavender fields. These worries are now mere dwarves in the worry kingdom: objects of amusement that they could have bothered me…..my job, my career, my sense of loneliness on the ending of a 30 year marriage. These were countered with the joy of freedom from a damaging marriage. I had been carrying so many burdens. I had discovered energising and caring friends but there was still the grief. I haven’t cried out the grief yet. I had to keep going.

Ane means donkey in French and for years I have been the donkey, doing the work, carrying the burdens. Now I am going to sit in a meadow in the autumn sunshine and allow myself to be.



In reality in Brittany on holiday we walked past and around Carnac and the megaliths on a day which poured with rain and thundered then turned into a sunny beach moment. I paddled in the warm sea getting my trousers slightly wet in the salty waves sinking my toes into the golden, yellow sand. The French played volleyball and the mood was one of a vast relax and fun. We were on the other side of France to the lavender fields though and France is also vast.

I made notes which I have somewhere of the mental and physical journey I went on over the summer. I am sure they are somewhere but that somewhere is not to hand just now.

I have this summary statement, written in the First Wait, about the lavender fields of the summer dreams:

Let go into a world you can create with God[1] in your mind.

C.S. Lewis describes a sense of yearning in ‘Surprised by Joy’ that he understands later to be the presence of God. I too understand this and can fall into my past sometimes where all that seems lost is now and healed. Memory and experience fuse into a sense of being and this is my understanding of God, of joy. It comes with an ability to rejoice in existing in the moment.


[1] Note on God: God defying definition - I prefer to anchor into Dave Allen’s ‘May your God go with you’. Further note on God and ‘why suffering?’ from spouse: I don’t ask questions above my pay grade.

 

 







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